Navy officer Walker a Cold War cryptologist, became an instructor at SAC

By Mary Mills Heidbrink, Staff Writer

Published
2:46 pm CST, Friday, January 5, 2018

Jack O. Walker was part of the Navy team that decoded intercepted enemy messages.

Jack O. Walker was part of the Navy team that decoded intercepted enemy messages.

Photo: Courtesy Photo

Photo: Courtesy Photo

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Jack O. Walker was part of the Navy team that decoded intercepted enemy messages.

Jack O. Walker was part of the Navy team that decoded intercepted enemy messages.

Photo: Courtesy Photo

Navy officer Walker a Cold War cryptologist, became an instructor at SAC

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As a Navy officer working in cryptology in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, Jack O. Walker was part of the U.S. forces that helped end the Cold War.

“His team was responsible for decoding any enemy messages that were intercepted and providing intelligence to the other branches” of the military, said his daughter, Amy Walker Bleess.

Walker, who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, was well-suited for the work.

“Anything that was intellectually stimulating or challenging, he loved,” Bleess said. “He was always academically inclined and anything educational was huge to him.”

Passing those values along to his children, Walker “always told us to question stuff,” his daughter said. “He’d say, ‘Don’t just read something and take it at face value.’ One of his biggest things based on what he saw (in the Navy) was that we needed to educate ourselves.”

Walker died Dec. 11 at 85.

Second to the youngest of eight children reared in San Antonio, Walker was a high achiever early on.

Developing an appreciation of opera after singing in the children’s chorus during the 1946 San Antonio Grand Opera Festival at only 13, Walker would become an avid fan of the genre and see more than 500 performances by the time he was in his late 60s.

“It was one of his biggest passions,” Bleess said. “He and my mother traveled around the world going to world-renowned opera houses … attended the Santa Fe Opera every year for almost 30 years.”

Walker also supported the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Opera Guild of San Antonio as a member.

Attending Thomas Edison High School, Walker served as student body president and was state champion in UIL journalistic writing in his senior year before graduating in 1950.

Though his family had little money, Walker was determined to attend college and enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin.

Working his way through, Walker also joined the Navy Reserves in 1951.

Graduating in 1954, Walker was selected for Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, and was commissioned as an ensign before becoming an intelligence officer specializing in cryptology in 1956.

Working on projects that required the highest security clearance, Walker could seldom talk about his work.

“He could only share with us stuff that was public,” his daughter said.

Walker met his future wife while stationed in Hawaii while they were both attending a dinner at the officer’s club. She and her mother were there visiting her sister, who lived there with her husband, for six weeks.

“They spent every moment they could together while she was there,” Bleess said. Walker proposed to her at Christmas that year while visiting her at her parents’ home in Minnesota.

Married in 1959, the couple were stationed in Germany, Guam and Washington, D.C., before Walker retired in 1975 after his wife became ill.

She was “diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and given six months to live,” Bleess said.

Beating all odds, Walker’s wife lived for 30 more years.

Moving the family to San Antonio to be closer to his family, Walker later helped his wife write “The Fat Lady Hasn't Sung,” a book about living with cancer.

“He always loved writing,” Bleess said. “He had fond memories of working for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram” the summer of 1953.

Becoming a management instructor at San Antonio College the same year he retired from the Navy, Walker was always happy to help his students succeed.

“A lot of his kids were already in their careers,” Bleess said. “He … enjoyed teaching them and being part of their journey to better themselves; he felt he was successful if someone was making A’s by the end of his class.”